Wages of Sin Read Online Free PDF Page A

load on. The bloodshot, baggy eyes. The grip on the nightstick to hide the booze tremors. The smell of the cheap rye sweating out the pores of your skin.
    “I don't believe I caught your name,” Rourke said, letting a little mean show in his smile.
    The other cop answered with a sneer of his own. “Jack Murphy.”
    “Well, keep up the good work, Patrolman Jack Murphy,” Rourke said, tapping the cop's shiny badge with his finger. “Keep smiling and kissing ass like you're doing, and maybe someday you, too, can be a jumped-up, jackass dick.”
    Fio made a harsh grunting noise when he saw the dead priest. “God almighty.”
    Rourke stepped up to the body and slipped his hand inside the cassock's side pocket. He found a rosary, some loose change, a key ring with two keys, and a library card. “Father Patrick Walsh,” he read aloud.
    Fio groaned. “Aw, man, don't tell me that. Why are we always the ones to catch the political hot potatoes?”
    There were two hundred and seventy-five priests in New Orleans, but only one had the celebrity of Father Patrick Walsh. He'd had a book of his homilies published, which had become a best-seller, and worshippers came from as far away as Texas and Mississippi to hear him celebrate the Mass at his church, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary. He had a preaching style that was more evangelical than Catholic, with his talk of being baptized in the spirit of Jesus, and with the gospel singing, and the speaking in tongues. His flamboyance and unorthodoxy had gotten him into trouble with the Church hierarchy more than once, but he was known affectionately as “our Father Pat” to his flock and his fans. They adored him.
    Or so the
Times-Picayune
had said in a story the newspaper had done on him not long ago. The article, Rourke remembered, had said Father Patrick Walsh was an orphan who knew nothing about his origins beyond a foundling home in Paris, Louisiana, a little sugarcane town sixty miles northwest on the Bayou Lafourche. This priest hadn't been anybody's brother after all.
    “Are we sure it's him?” Fio said. He was setting up the grid camera on a high tripod. “A library card don't mean much. Maybe it's not him.”
    “It's him.”
    In life, Father Patrick Walsh had possessed the flat green eyes, wide mouth, and heavy bones of north Louisiana hill people. Rourke could make out the remnants of those features now, in spite of the beating that had been laid on him.
    Fio took a shot of the body, the camera's flash lamp strobing harsh white light onto the bloodied face, the bare, burnt feet, the nails piercing vulnerable flesh.
    “Where's the hammer?” Rourke said. “What did he use to drive in the nails?”
    Fio studied the area around the drying rack, “A shoe, maybe.”
    “Not heavy enough.”
    “Yeah, you're probably right.” Fio took a slow look up and down the length of the building. “It's going to take a frigging army to canvass this scene. I'll dust for latents, but in a factory like this—there's going to be a million of 'em.”
    “Concentrate on the candles and around where he drove in the nails. Who knows, we might get lucky.”
    The beat cop had been swinging his stick and smirking as he watched them work, but now he snorted aloud.
    “That's Jack Murphy,” Rourke said to Fio. “He doesn't like us—thinks we're jackass dicks, or something like that. Or maybe he's just in a sour mood because this time the corpse turned out to be a priest, so there wasn't any diamond stick pin or money roll for him to lift before calling it in on the signal box.”
    Murphy gave Rourke a don't-fuck-with-me look but he said nothing, and Rourke thought his jab had probably not been too far off the mark. In the tradition of veteran beat cops on the pad everywhere, Jack Murphy had probably rifled through the dead priest's clothing looking for something he could steal while his rookie partner was outside puking his guts out.
    Rourke stared at Jack Murphy until a tiny tremor began to